In September 1939 she was with the 2nd Cruiser Squadron, escorting convoys to Scandinavia and engaged in the hunt for the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.

[4] On 24 November Force K, made up of the British light cruisers Aurora and Penelope and the destroyers Lance and Lively, intercepted an Axis convoy about 100 nautical miles west of Crete.

The Italian destroyer Alvise Da Mosto and the sole cargo ship Mantovani were sunk.

On 19 December while steaming off Tripoli she was heavily damaged in a mine field and was forced to retire to Malta.

Off Oran, she engaged the Vichy French destroyers Tramontane and Tornade on 8 November 1942, sinking the latter and damaging the former so badly that she had to be beached.

By December she was operating as part of Force Q at Bône against the Axis evacuation and supply convoys between Trapani and Tunis.

Then, as a unit of the 15th Cruiser Squadron, she participated in the invasion of Sicily and the Salerno landings (Operation Avalanche) before moving into the Aegean in October 1943.

Chiang Kai-shek spent time on the ship observing the worsening military situation at some points.

The crew was not content after not having been paid since December 1948, when the ship itself was assigned to guard $500,000 in silver dollars, and planned a mutiny for weeks.

On 24 February 1949 the mutineers found out that their plan had been discovered, opened up the small arms locker, and took over the ship.